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Food, family and memories are as intertwined in the South as if woven on the same thread. At any function we attend, from a party to a wedding to a funeral, we are as likely to talk as much about the food that was there, as we are about why we are gathered. ~Mary Foreman

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Sunday, June 21, 2009

A gravy made with flour, cocoa, sugar, butter, vanilla and milk, is best served right over some piping hot biscuits... yes, even if they are straight out of the can!

Chocolate Gravy and Biscuits

Okay. Chocolate and gravy. Two words that you don't likely associate together, so I know this is a totally weird concept. I do!! But hey, don't knock it till ya try it cuz I tell you what, there are lots of google searches that land here looking for this stuff. Give it a try and I'm guessing you'll be sold too.

When you get ready to want some of these {and you will want some of these}, you certainly could make your biscuits from scratch, and of course that's the best way to go always when one has a choice, but if ya got a hankerin' for biscuits in a hurry, I highly advise that you should always have at least one can of whoompf biscuits on hand in the fridge.

Course those kind of biscuits are the biscuit cans that you whoompf against the edge of the counter to pop open, in case you weren't sure about that! I don't care how many times in all my years of livin' that I've done that, the sound of that air poppin' out of those cans has always scared the beejeesus outta me!

Anyhoo... you use the whoompf kind of biscuits because you usually make this when you want chocolate, you want it now, and the only form of chocolate that you have in the house is cocoa in the pantry, so who has time for scratch biscuits under those circumstances?? We are in a hurry here!

Get those biscuits goin' in the oven and start makin' the chocolate gravy. Yep. Chocolate. Plus gravy. Chocolate Gravy. Sounds kinda weird doesn't it, but by now with all the great southern bloggers out there, her Majesty the Sweet Potato Queen{of Jackson, Mississippi I might add} herself, and the now widely famous southerner, Miss Paula Deen, you surely have seen this bit of heaven by now?

Well, now it's about time for you to experience it, I'd have to say!

Now, it's true. This so-called Chocolate Gravy is essentially just a Homemade Chocolate Pudding served hot, over hot-from-the-oven biscuits, we know that. But, we like to call it Chocolate Gravy because, well, it makes us feel like we've gone and gotten all clever and invented something special... so, just play along, 'k?

Prepare the biscuits. In the meantime, in a medium sized saucepan whisk together the flour, cocoa, salt and sugar until well mixed. Set that pot over medium high heat and begin to whisk the milk in, a little at a time at first, until the mixture is blended in well. Continue whisking and adding the remaining milk, whisking until the mixture begins to bubble up and thicken. Whisk in the butter until fully incorporated, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Grab a hot biscuit, split it in half and pour the gravy over it. Or just pour the chocolate gravy into a small ramekin, grab a biscuit and tear off pieces for tipping. Dance a happy dance.

Material Disclosure: Unless otherwise noted, you should assume that post links to the providers of goods and services mentioned, establish an affiliate relationship and/or other material connection and that I may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You are never under any obligation to purchase anything when using my recipes and you should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

27 comments:

The first time I heard of chocolate gravy was when I met my husband (in 1971). He used to eat it at his uncle's house in the Ozark Mts in north Arkansas. I had to improvise the recipe to make it juliecrtfor him and it's basically like yours, a thin chocolate pudding. Mmmmm. Need to make us some!

I'm from Southern Arkansas, and grew up on biscuits and chocolate gravy. Homemade biscuits though. What you call "whoomph" biscuits, we called "whop" biscuits, for the same reason. (Whop, according to Webster, means to beat.) I now live in West Virginia, where I met one person who knows what chocolate gravy is, and says it originated in Appalachia. Since then, I've heard it originated in Tennessee, Mississippi, and of course Arkansas. Wherever it came from, it's good stuff! And actually not all that unhealthy.Deb

My grandmother would make this for my dad and his sisters when they were young. She taught my mom how to make it. I grew up on this stuff. I now make it for my family. 3 generations and still going strong. I really need to teach my daughter how to make it for her family now. My son-in-law likes it too.

To the person who went off on a tangent about how I make this, I am not going to publish those comments. Hasn't anybody ever taught you that it's bad manners to walk into somebody else's kitchen and bark unsolicited criticism at them about something they've cooked? If you want to email me your 100 year old recipe I'll be happy to check it out, but please remember everybody cooks differently - your way may be different from someone else's way, but that doesn't mean your way or my way is wrong. Although I do have an Appalachian cookbook with a recipe virtually identical to this one, Appalachian cooking is often a bit different from much of the rest of the South, so I'd love to see what makes your version different. It just doesn't make my version, or anybody else's version "wrong." There is no one Southern recipe for anything!!

I have always known what this was, my Papa was from Missouri, but my Grandma is from Michigan and she said she doesn't eat no pudding on her biscuts! Haha I am now engaged to a man from Arkansas and he loves him some chocolate gravy! I am still not a real big fan but I'll find myself makin it for him.

Oh my goodness this was really good! My kids looked at me like chocolate for breakfast wwhhaatt! I used this as an opportunity to make your southern buttermilk biscuits again and it was great. At first I thought it would turn out a little grainy, boy was I wrong. The gravy was smooth as silk. This was a great Sunday breakfast for my family and I. Thank you so much. I will definitely be making this again and again! Again, thank you.

WOW! I’ve not had this since I was a child, growing up in New York City. One of my crazy relatives used to make this all the time for us kids. And yes, I had a lot of crazy relatives. Pecan trees are not the only trees with nuts in them. ;-)BTW, the lady who called them “whop” biscuits… yeah, that wouldn’t go over too big in NYC; if ya’ know what I mean. :-D Thanks for the memories. God bless.

LOL Chris!! We have a lot of those nuts in mine too, but that's what makes family so special, right?!!

Believe it or not, we had a well loved restaurant down here back in the 60s called The Friendship House. It got destroyed by Camille and they moved up the road a bit and reopened as The Log House. Anyway, they had a very popular Italian salad that was called "Wop Salad," which was actually a popular salad in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast back then. Not a soul, including the local Italian population, even considered that improper or remotely politically incorrect back in the day.

Cocoa gravy is not a deep south dish. It is a central Appalachian dish. It can be traced back to the the area according to the large numbers of migrations to Arkansas, Missouri, southern Illinois and Indiana, western Tennessee and Kentucky, and (due to the Cherokee migration) Oklahoma. In any event, it is never spoken of without a great deal of enthusiasm and nostalgia.

Oh my, well.. thanks for your comment Anonymous, however... I'm not sure what you are objecting to, or what you are trying to say about the deep south, but chocolate gravy IS certainly a recipe we enjoy in the deep south, and have for many, many, many years, no matter WHERE it may allegedly be traced back to. It's certainly been around the south long enough to claim as a food of the south. My goodness, most all of the foods we enjoy in this country and in the south, can be traced back to somewhere else - many times the foreign countries from where each one of us originated! How about let's quick lecturing each other on what WE think is right or wrong and just enjoy fellowship and food for heaven's sake. There's enjoy turmoil in the world today, so let's not put food in the middle of yet another argument.

Thanks for taking the time to comment - I love hearing from readers and I read every single comment and try to respond to them right here on the site, so stop back by!

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The classic southern plate for supper is made up of meat and three, cornbread or rolls & a tall glass of sweet iced tea.

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